Weekend Cooking: A Midnight Pastry Shop Called Hwawoldang by Lee Onhwa

 When her grandmother dies, Yeon-hwa inherits a debt-ridden bakery shop called Hwawodlang (which translates as the Flower Moon Temple Pastry Shop. It is not, however, a normal bakery. The will specifies that the shop can only open until 10pm until midnight, and it also specifies that Yeon-hwa must run the shop for at least a month. A month seems doable!

It turns out though that this bakery is different in other ways. The customers are spirits, making their final stop before passing on into the afterlife. There is also a black cat who watched Yeon-hwa with very knowing eyes and shaman named Sa-wol who are helping Yeon-hwa to understand the true nature of the bakery, the connection with a temple and ultimately to understand her grandmother.

Yeon-hwa has always felt a distance from her grandmother even though she stepped in to care for Yeon-hwa when she was a young girl and her parents were killed in a car crash. Now, Yeon-hwa wishes their relationship could have been different, and they could have had conversations about life, about her parents and about the bakery, but it is too late.

The various chapters feature a different sweet being made and we learn the reason why the spirits are requesting this particular item. It always have some meaning to the spirit and to the person it is intended for. The other thing is that obviously ghosts don't usually carry cash, so they in effect pay for their pastry by leaving an item that means something to them behind. 

Chocolate Jeonbyeong Crackers - A woman asks Yeon-hwa to make these for her daughter and leaves behind something precious. 

Plum-Blossom Manju Buns - A shy man who had only just summoned up the courage to ask a girl out asks for manju buns to be made for her, to help her move on.

Green Tea Dango - A woman asks for this to be delivered to her fellow artist colleague and friend

Strawberry Chapssal-tteok - A young boy wants to give Strawberry Chapssal-tteok to his older step sister who blames herself for his death.

Chestnut Yanggaeng of Goodbye - We learn more about Sa-Wol and Yeon-hwa learns more about her parents and grandmother. 

Along the way, we also learn some of the rules of the afterlife which includes the fact that a spirit has 3 years to pass into the after life, otherwise they will be stuck forever.

While there are plenty of Asian books which people returning from the past/future/afterlife to have one final conversation with their loved ones, that is not the case here. Yeon-hwa is the one who has the interactions, including seeing details of their lives and then she and Sa-Wol act as conduits to the loved ones. It does have that familiar episodic structure that we see in so many of these types of books

I enjoyed reading this book but I didn't feel as connected with it as I might have expected to be. I don't think we particularly go to know Yeon-hwa as well as we could have. It was almost like we were kept at arms length which is a bit like Yeon-hwa's own relationship with her grandmother. However, it does have the same feel as a lot of those books so it is feel good and affirming without being excitable.

I was wondering how I was going to be able to describe all the different pastries which are mentioned in this book while writing this post, so I was very pleased to find a link to this video which shows what all the different desserts look like

Doesn't it all look so pretty!

This book was nice to read without being compelling, so I have to ask myself would I read more books set here and the answer is probably. It doesn't look like the author has written any more books yet, but she might!

I chose to read this book as it fit the AAPI Heritage category on the Spring Goodreads challenge. I am sharing this review with Foodies Read hosted at Based on a True Story, with the Books in Translation Challenge hosted at The Introverted Reader and the Speccy Fiction Challenge hosted at Book'd Out.

Rating 3.5/5

Weekly meals

Saturday - Out for dinner
Sunday - Beef Rendang (new)
Monday - Sausage and Broccoli pasta (new0
Tuesday - Mexican Chicken and Rice
Wednesday - Pork chops, mash and cauliflower
Thursday -  Tomato and Paneer Curry
Friday - Takeaway

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